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Strengthen your disaster recovery test plan

Sponsored by SearchDisasterRecovery.com

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A critical aspect of disaster recovery planning is often overlooked: disaster recovery testing.

Disaster recovery (DR) testing is the only reliable way for an organization to gauge the effectiveness of its disaster preparedness and data recovery planning. Even so, simply verifying that a backup can be restored is not enough. There are significant differences between data restoration and business continuity.

Disaster recovery testing covers a range of services. It must demonstrate the ability to recover data, as well as quickly return applications, infrastructure components and mission critical systems to an operational status following a disaster. IT pros must work to develop an effective DR test plan while establishing criteria for evaluating the metrics that are gathered during recovery testing. DR testing also allows you to conduct plan maintenance, offers a training opportunity for staff and creates awareness within your organization about disaster recovery procedures.

No matter how lean your DR plan is, it still needs to be tested from time to time to ensure that it will work as expected. According to recent survey data, 29% of companies don't have a set disaster recovery test plan schedule and 4% never test it.

This Drill Down will provide strategies and best practices that organizations can use to put their disaster recovery initiatives to the test.